随着 ... 而 in Mandarin: with, as

English sentences with structures like “as A does X, B does Y” can be quite tricky to translate into Mandarin.

They usually contain ‘as’ or ‘with’, and express related situations or causal relationships.

The Mandarin 随着 … 而 structure is very useful for expressing this.

The general format is like this:

[NP] 随着 [NP] 而 [VP]

(NP is 'noun phrase', VP is 'verb phrase')

The difficulty is that it doesn’t mirror the English equivalent exactly. In English, the causal event can be expressed with a verb or a noun, whereas in this Mandarin structure it can only be expressed with a noun. For example, in English it might be:

“As global warming increases, sea levels get higher and higher.”

But this would have to be rendered with a noun in the Mandarin 随着 structure:

海面随着全球变暖的增长而越来越高。

i.e. “With the increase of global warming, sea levels get higher and higher.”